Page 36 - TOB Magazine March/April 2013

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TOBACCO OUTLET BUSINESS
MARCH/APRIL 2013
A Retiree’s Retail Venture
For Paul Ballow, Paul’s Pipe & Tobacco is a chance to enjoy
a second career in a beautiful setting.
By Michael Gelfand
trench marketing
When entrepreneurs look at
prospective sites for a new
business, they don’t typically
gravitate to rural, lightly populated areas
where the pace of life is measured in
geologic terms. But slow, steady, and
secluded is the way Paul Ballow likes
things, and that’s exactly what he got
when he opened the aptly named Paul’s
Pipe & Tobacco, his first tobacco store,
in Wofford Heights,
California.
Wofford Heights
(population: 2,200) will
never be confused with
a bustling metropolis.
The woodsy Kern
County town, which
was founded as a
resort area back in
1948, is a tiny bedroom
community best known as a river
rafting hotspot and an entryway into
the southern Sierra Nevada mountain
chain (it’s also close to Kernville, which
annually hosts the nostalgic Whisky
Flats Days on President’s Day weekend).
Located near Lake Isabella and roughly
one hour of winding roads away from
Bakersfield, the town is an ideal place for
retirees, outdoor aficionados and world-
worn folks who have tired of the hustle
and bustle of big cities.
Ballowmoved toWofford Heights nine
years ago when he purchased his dream
retirement property there. Already tired
of his daily two-hour commute to and
from Bakersfield, he began to realize that
his eyesight had started to deteriorate
after decades as an industrial engraver,
and those two insights led him to decide
to retire from engraving and get into the